On 26 April 1920 the Polish army launched a major offensive against Soviet Russia. The question of the French government's role in the unleashing of this attack has long been a matter of historical debate. P. S. Wandycz, whose work is the most recent detailed account of French eastern policy during the early twenties, attributes no major responsibility to the French for the outbreak of all-out war on Poland's eastern frontier. He states that the Quai d'Orsay was unenthusiastic about a Polish campaign and that the Poles had acted on their own initiative. N. Davies asserts that ‘Allied policy sought to discourage Poland from attacking Russia.’ ‘Without formally forbidding a Polish offensive,’ he writes, the Allies ‘emphasized that it “the offensive’ could not enjoy their support. On the other hand, Soviet and European Left-wing opinion has long condemned the Polish attack as a direct result of French influence. Vladimir Potemkin noted that Poland was incapable of waging a full-scale war with its own resources and that consequently Allied influence had to be decisive in determining Warsaw's attitude toward a continuation of the war.

Barclays: the business of banking, 1690–1996. By Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxi+481. ISBN 0-521-79035-2. £45.00.

The worlds of the East India Company. Edited by H. V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002. Pp. xvii+246. ISBN 0-85115-877-3. £45.00.

Kingship and crown finance under James VI and I, 1603–1625. By John Cramsie. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002. Pp. xi+242. ISBN 0-86193-259-5. £50.00.

Mammon's music: literature and economics in the age of Milton. By Blair Hoxby. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Pp. xii+320. ISBN 0-300-09378-0. $45.00.

Usury, interest, and the Reformation. By Eric Kerridge. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. 206. ISBN 0-7546-0688-0. £55.00.

The rise of commercial empires: England and the Netherlands in the age of mercantilism, 1650–1770. By David Ormrod. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii+400. ISBN 0-521-81926-1. £55.00.

The rhetoric of credit: merchants in early modern writing. By Ceri Sullivan. London: Associated University Presses, 2002. Pp. 217. ISBN 0-8386-3926-7. £38.00.

The unshackling of the European economy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries was achieved, ironically, by the forging of new and stronger chains of trade and credit within nations, across regions, and around the globe. The seven books under review explore that process from different disciplinary standpoints, but chiefly as it affected England, the country that would become emblematic of commercial advancement and under whose sway the modern capitalist system emerged. How England managed this feat financially and commercially, politically and culturally, amidst the shifting opportunities and perils of these centuries is answered with an often impressive sophistication and imagination that take us well beyond hackneyed analyses prompted by the Weber–Tawney thesis.

In the period between 1935 and 1939, the international communist movement urged communist parties to strike a more nationalistic note in their propaganda. In Scotland this was met by what may seem as a surprising reluctance to move away from strict communist adherence to internationalism, and towards a more nationalistic approach to Scottish politics. This article aims at understanding how the interplay between the international and national political contexts resulted in this reluctance. It considers, in particular, the extent to which the national identity of Scottish communists influenced their approach to the national question. It places the ideas of Scottish communists in the context of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and considers how these were adapted into the national political context. As a further aid in determining which factors were at work when Scottish communists tackled the national question, the attitude of Scottish communists is compared with that of their fellow communists in Iceland. By broadening the perspective in this way, it is argued, we can make sense of the paradox that it was indeed international communism that eventually turned Scottish communists into nationalists.

Viscount Scudamore had three great passions: God, cider and cattle, in that order. He was remembered for cultivating cider apples, breeding cattle, his learning, and most of all for his piety, rebuilding one church, endowing others and aiding distressed divines during the interregnum. Many commended his erudition. He stood on the fringes of that republic of letters which revolved around Mersenne, a friend of the philosophers Hobbes, DuBosc and Grotius, and known to Samuel Hartlib who considered him ‘a great schollar and studying hard continually’. In particular he was a great reader of theology. William Laud had to warn him to ‘Booke it not to much’ while William Higford advised his grandson to ask the viscount, ‘a great lover of learning and very learned’, to guide his own study. The viscount recommended Jeremy Taylor's Holy living and Holy dying to his son, whilst consulting with Laud and Henry Hammond for his own reading. Hammond directed him to Augustine, Aquinas, Peter Lombard, Suarez and Grotius; clearly he was no beginner. In the early eighteenth century Matthew Gibson, Scudamore's first biographer, was astonished at the amount oftheological notes amongst the first viscount's papers. These, however, have all but disappeared. DespiteScudamore's famed ‘affection to Divine knowledge…[and] good proficiencie in it’, it is no longer possible to construct a system of divinity for the viscount, if he did ever work out his theological position comprehensively; perhaps like his friend William Laud he preferred to leave off the deep points of divinity.

The clergyman-scholar Charles Dodd used the study of the past to articulate a defence of the English Catholic community that enjoyed a rich legacy. His Church history proclaimed a vision of Catholic patriotism that appealed to the influence of medieval and Reformation history on contemporary religious debates, and informed the later push for civil emancipation. Dodd's work brought together two fashionable but seemingly contrary, historical sensibilities: grounded upon antiquarian recoveries of the gothic past, but shaped by a cosmopolitan spirit of ‘reason’ that drew upon continental reformist schools. Challenging the narratives forged through the Reformation, he pitched his works across a wide spectrum of English scholarly life, seeking dialogue with high-churchmen, constitutionalists, and supporters of religious toleration. But Dodd's later reputation as a herald of Catholic Enlightenment belied the controversies roused in his career. In delivering his view of history, Dodd was forced to suppress radical thoughts on the nature of English monarchy, stumbled into conflicts with fellow clergymen, and risked the taint of heresy with reflections upon the Holy See. Conceived to construct a new intellectual platform for his co-religionists within their national community, his works served inadvertently to reveal the complexity and fragility of English Catholic life.

Thomas Carlyle's promotion of Sir Robert Peel as a heroic statesman capable of presiding over a strongly interventionist state is paradoxical in light of the latter's rejection of paternalistic government. This paradox is heightened by Carlyle's hostility to the whigs: some members of this party identified an active role for the state and struggled against tendencies in whiggism which were connected to the ‘liberal toryism’ of Peel and his followers. An examination of Carlyle's knowledge of, and attitude towards, Peel shows that he was aware of his attraction to liberal economic ideas. However, Carlyle believed that Peel's sense of moral purpose and his cool view of conventional parliamentarianism were indicative of heroic potentials that were not possessed by whig politicians. The popularity which Peel enjoyed in the late 1840s was attributed by Carlyle to a widespread appreciation of his distinctive qualities; this provided the grounds for a generalized heroism which could be focused in an active state that was freed from the trammels of both economic liberalism and parliamentarianism.

In 1591 Julius Caesar, then judge of the High Court of Admiralty, initiated ‘ an important experiment…in the Admiralty court's continuing quest for greater respect and authority’. Despite high expectations on the part of Caesar, however, the experiment, a circuit of the west and southwest of England undertaken ‘in hopes of forcing the local authorities in those regions to submit to the supremacy’ of the Admiralty, was abortive. Caesar, beset by corrupt local officials and profiteering inhabitants, abandoned his circuit when only half completed and after obtaining results far less than he had anticipated. Caesar's failure, according to Lamar Hill, the historian of the ill-fated experiment, was not merely that of one Westminster bureaucrat unable to impose his authority in the provinces.

The English occupation of Tournai has recently generated far-reaching claims about its importance; allegedly Tournai provided a foretaste of certain developments of the Henrician Reformation. This article argues that Tournai was treated as an integral part of Henry VIII's ‘kingdom of France’ and its status consistently distinguished from that of the English kingdom. It was not, as has been suggested, granted representation in the English parliament. The argument that advanced ideas of ‘sovereignty’ derived from fifteenth-century French thought entered into English political discourse through Tournai is also countered. Important jurisdictional points were raised, notably over the administration of the bishopric, involving three powers, England, France, and the Habsburg government of Flanders. But Henry's insistence on his rights as a sovereign prince were directed against France, not, as has been claimed, against the papacy. Nothing in Henry's dealings with Tournai transcended well-established English doctrine and practice about the relationship between the political authority and the church. Nor did Henry's treatment of the conquered town evoke novel doctrines of royal power; it followed closely precedents set by Henry V. The conquest of Tournai increased the self-confidence of Henry VIII's government in both domestic and international affairs; but largely through Henry's belief that he was successfully emulating the military achievement of Henry V, not through any input of novel political doctrine.

One of the most fertile grounds for diplomatic and journalistic speculation in the late 1920s was the series of private meetings between Sir Austen Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini. During Sir Austen's tenure of the Foreign Secretary's portfolio, from November 1924 to June 1929, the two met five times in complete privacy, without aides or even interpreters, since both spoke fluent French. The communiqués they subsequently issued were conglomerations of clichés, stressing their personal friendship and political harmony but omitting any specific reference to the subjects discussed. It is not surprising, therefore, that rumours of secret agreements and cynical deals abounded. Indeed, Mussolini was compelled publicly to deny the widespread assumption diat he sought and received Sir Austen's approval for Italian foreign policy at these meetings,1 while Chamberlain was obliged to take his holidays in 1927 in Spain to avoid the ’ undesirable political speculation ‘ that would have followed another visit to his beloved Italy.2 The evidence of the Chamberlain Papers and the British and Italian diplomatic documents suggests that much of the speculation was very wide of the mark.3

James I succeeded to the English throne not by act of parliament, not by election, not by the will of his predecessor, but by the will of God in making him an heir. The right by which he ruled was accordingly not less than divine. Further, partly by the circumstances of his succession but in greater measure by the tradition of English public law, he exercised his rule as the absolute king of a free monarchy. On this all Englishmen were agreed. They seem to have taken great pride in the fact that their king had no superior on earth. They shared, as his free subjects, in his greatness. At this time most Europeans did not belong to politically independent nations.

The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was the major representative of Second International socialism on British soil. As a socialist organization it is usually viewed through the distorting prism of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. This article sets out to analyse the organization's strategy in its proper context – that of the struggle to transform Victorian and Edwardian Britain into the co-operative commonwealth. SDF views on the nature of revolution and what members called ‘palliative’ reforms are considered, as are their views on the character of the British state, the nature of democracy, the role of parliament, and the potential for violence at times of change. For them, the transition to socialism would be effected by well-fed, organized workers with a degree of education and culture, and their social reforms were designed to bring this revolutionary class into being. Campaigns against unemployment, work on school boards, boards of guardians, and local councils are found to have been conducted both as ends in themselves, and as a part of a grander strategy for the attainment of socialism. The SDF was a ‘parliamentary revolutionary party’ which sought to use reforms constructively in order to bring about the transformation of British society.

The construction and distribution of books containing large copperplate images was of great importance to practitioners of natural history during the eighteenth century. This article examines the case of the botanist and president of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), who attempted to publish a series of images based on the botanical illustrations produced by Georg Forster (1754–94) on Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772–5) during the 1790s. The analysis reveals how the French Revolution influenced approaches to constructing and distributing works of natural history in Britain, moving beyond commercial studies of book production to show how Banks's political agenda shaped the taxonomic content and distribution of this publication. Matters were complicated by Forster's association with radical politics and the revolutionary ideologies attached to materials collected in the Pacific by the 1790s. Banks's response to the Revolution influenced the distribution of this great work, showing how British loyalist agendas interacted with scientific practice and shaped the diffusion of natural knowledge in the revolutionary age.

Taking the humoral body as its spatial focus, this article considers how medical writers and practitioners engaged with ‘intoxicants’ both in terms of the prescription of medicines and in the conceptualization of compulsive consumption – or what is often styled by modern practitioners as ‘addiction’. Focusing in the first instance on the compilers of vernacular pharmacopoeia – compilations of medical ingredients and techniques – the article argues that just as sugar, tobacco, and especially opiates had a significant and possibly transformative role in everyday physic, so the ‘operation’ of opiates, distilled spirits, and tobacco was crucial in stimulating new thinking about how bodies became substance-dependent. The article also argues, however, that, in order to conceptualize the problem, writers turned to the venerable language of custom rather than the relatively new language of addiction – in particular, the ancient idea of custom as ‘second nature’.